The invention relates to an envelope-filling bench for adding onto a push-in station of a mail-processing machine, in which enclosures or sets of enclosures are conveyed into the push-in station by means of a conveyor and are pushed into envelopes by means of a push-in arrangement, said envelopes being conveyed, on the envelope-filling bench, into a position opposite the push-in arrangement, opened there, held ready for receiving the enclosures or the sets of enclosures and, once filled, being closed and conveyed further. Mail-processing machines of this type are known in general and described, for example, in DE-195 00 746 A1. U.S. Pat. No. 4,955,185 also discloses an installation of the type in question here.
If the apparatuses for handling and conveying the envelopes are integrated in the mail-processing machine, they necessitate a comparatively complicated construction of the overall drive system, for which reason it is sought to construct a mail-processing machine from individual units which are each assigned to a certain function within the operating sequence and are only mechanically coupled or synchronized to a limited extent and are predominantly coordinated with one another electronically in their respective operating cycle or operating sequence. This achieves the situation where individual operating units of a mail-processing machine, depending on the application or requirement, may be of easily handleable design and assembled in a modular manner to form a wide variety of systems. This use of individual operating stations, however, in some cases necessitates a comparatively complicated housing construction and frame construction with an associated increase in the production costs.
Accordingly, the object of the invention is to design an envelope-filling bench of the type mentioned in the introduction such that it can be produced easily and cost-effectively and can be adapted to many different methods of envelope handling and transportation.
Particularly worth emphasizing is the advantage of the envelope-filling bench specified here that the latter can be welded together from angled sheet-metal parts, the envelope-filling bench containing, once the angled sheet-metal parts have been combined, a high-strength box profile of which the walls, as well as other regions of the angled sheet-metal parts, are provided with cutouts, through-passages and openings which are produced by straightforward punching operations prior to the angling operation.
The envelope-filling bench proposed here is distinguished, along with good dimensional stability and strength, by low weight and, in certain applications, can be attached to push-in stations of mail-processing machines without having its own support in relation to the underlying surface.